Teach English to newcomers, in a school board or an adult program. Two very different routes, with different training and different terms of work.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Counsellors: send it to a student from your own email in one click.
Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $95,000 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $60,000 at the lower end to about $124,000 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
5 to 6 years after high school, on the usual route.
$24,200 to $64,300 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a licence or registration before you can work.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$95,000
Lower end
$60,000
Upper end
$124,000
Job Bank's national median is $45.67 an hour, about $95,000 a year full time. Read the page title before you get excited: it covers high school teachers, so these are what high school teachers earn. Job Bank's figures do not cover adult and private language programs. See the next two cards.
$59.77 an hour in Nunavut
The highest Job Bank median for high school teachers. Yukon is $54.95 and Newfoundland and Labrador $51.81
New Brunswick's median is the lowest, at $41.03. You are paid on the same grid as every other teacher in the board, and you move up it with years of service and extra qualifications. This route needs a teaching certificate, so it is 5 to 6 years of university.
Paid by the hour
Settlement programs, colleges, private language schools
Job Bank's numbers above are for high school teachers and do not cover this work. It is often part time, often contract by contract, often with no benefits. Training for this route takes about a year.
Roughly, all in
$24,200 to $64,300
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
There are two routes and they cost very different amounts. The low end is the adult education route: a three year bachelor's degree at cheaper tuition plus a recognized language teaching certificate. The high end is the school board route: a four year degree followed by a Bachelor of Education, which takes longer, costs more, and adds a professional certification and yearly membership fee. The school route leads to a teacher's salary and pension, and the adult route usually does not.
The adult route is far cheaper and far faster. The school route costs more and leads to a teacher's salary and pension.
Pension and full benefits in a school board
The same package every teacher gets.
School holidays in the board route
About 12 weeks a year with schools closed.
Flexible and often remote hours in adult programs
Online language teaching is common.
Very portable skill
Recognized training lets you teach abroad too, though foreign pay varies wildly.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Become a certified teacher first, then add the language specialty.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Take a second language to Grade 12. Knowing what it feels like to learn one is the whole job.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Linguistics, English, modern languages or education all fit. For high school you need two teachable subjects.
Bachelor of Education (B.Ed)
1 to 2 years
Four semesters in Ontario, 1 to 2 years elsewhere, with classroom placements.
Provincial certification
A few weeks
Register with your regulator, for example the Ontario College of Teachers.
Language qualification courses
1 to 3 years, part time
In Ontario this is a three-part Additional Qualification (AQ) in teaching English language learners. Part 1 needs only your certificate; later parts need teaching experience.
Much shorter. You are teaching adults, not children, so no teaching certificate is required.
Bachelor's degree
3 to 4 years
Any subject. Most recognized programs and most employers expect a degree.
Recognized language teaching program
6 months to 1 year
A certificate or diploma from a program recognized by TESL Canada (Teaching English as a Second Language Canada) or its provincial affiliate. Includes a supervised practicum.
Certification
Weeks
Apply for professional certification. It comes in standards, and the higher standards need more training hours and a degree.
First contracts
Ongoing
Settlement agencies, college language centres, private schools. Usually part time at first and you stitch together hours.
English
You will teach grammar explicitly, which means you need to actually know it.
French or any second language
The best preparation there is.
Social sciences
Culture, migration and identity are in the room every day.
Drama or public speaking
Teaching a language is performance as much as explanation.
To teach in a public school you need a provincial teaching certificate, and that is a hard legal requirement. Teaching adults is not regulated: nobody can stop you calling yourself a language teacher. In practice, certification from TESL Canada (Teaching English as a Second Language Canada) or its provincial affiliates is what serious employers ask for, and federally funded settlement programs will not hire without it.
In Quebec, teaching English as a second language is its own 4 year Bachelor of Education right after CEGEP (public college), not a qualification you add later.
Finish Secondary V
Age 16 or 17
Any stream gets you into CEGEP (public college). Strong English, and French, both help.
Pre-university DEC (Diploma of College Studies)
2 years
A 2 year program at a CEGEP (public college). No tuition for full-time Quebec residents, though colleges charge small fees.
Bachelor of Education in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language)
4 years
120 credits over at least 4 years, with placements in elementary, secondary and adult classes. In English at McGill, Concordia and Bishop's. In French at Laval, Sherbrooke, Université du Québec à Montréal and others.
Pass the language test
During the degree
English universities use the EETC (English Exam for Teacher Certification). French universities use a written French test (TECFÉE). You need it for the licence.
Get your teaching diploma
After graduating
Your university recommends you to the Ministère de l'Éducation (Quebec's education ministry). You can then teach English as a second language from kindergarten to the end of high school.
Get hired
Varies
Many start as substitutes, which needs no licence in a subject related to your studies. A student with a job offer can teach on a provisional licence.
If you already hold a bachelor's degree, McGill's Master of Arts in Teaching and Learning leads to the Quebec licence and has an English or French as a second language option. It is 45 credits, about 16 months full time. Concordia also offers a TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) certificate for adult and private teaching, which does not lead to the school licence.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Higher certification standard
Professional certification comes in tiers. The higher ones need more training hours plus a degree, and unlock college and settlement program jobs.
Federal settlement program training
Programs like LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) are federally funded and a major employer of adult language teachers.
Exam preparation teaching
Coaching students through the English tests required for immigration and university admission, often as private lessons.
Master's in applied linguistics or education
Needed for college and university language department jobs, and it moves you up the school board grid.
A second language of your own
Even an imperfect one. It shows you understand the struggle and it helps with parents.
Time living or teaching abroad
Common on this path and employers value it.
Online teaching skills
A large share of adult language teaching is now remote.
Settlement and cultural knowledge
Your students are dealing with paperwork, housing and jobs, not just verb tenses.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
In a school, you pull small groups of new arrivals out of class, or team-teach inside one, and you spend a lot of time explaining a student's level to other teachers. In an adult program, you teach a class of adults who may be doctors in their home country and beginners in yours. Lots of speaking practice, listening drills, and real-world tasks like reading a lease. Marking is lighter than a regular teaching job. Preparation is heavier, because you make most of your own materials.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The federal government pays for English and French classes at no cost for eligible permanent residents. Those programs are a major employer of adult language teachers, which is why immigration policy shows up in your job security.
The Toronto District School Board says its students and their families speak over 100 languages. A single classroom can hold five or six.
Language researchers have long found that conversational fluency arrives in a year or two, while the academic language needed to follow a science class takes far longer. That gap is the reason this job exists.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Teaching first, then the rest of the field. See every career in education.
Last checked October 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in Canadian dollars, based on Government of Canada Job Bank wage data and published salary grids. They vary by province, employer and experience. Tuition is for domestic students. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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